[cryptome] Re: Geoff Stone, Obama's Review Group - Part 2

From: Ron boyer <speedydelivery72@xxxxxxxxx>

To: "cryptome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <cryptome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2014 07:19:08 -0400

October 24, 1952: President Truman establishes the National Security Agency
(NSA) as an heir to the Armed Forces Security Agency, which was created on
May 20, 1949 to help crack German and Japanese communications codes during
World War II. (Source)
July 27, 1993: United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 establishes
policies to "ensure that the missions and functions" of the United States
Signals Intelligence System (SIGINT) "are conducted in a manner that
safeguards the constitutional rights of U.S. persons." Section 4 of this
Directive spells out precisely the ways in which the NSA is permitted to
intercept the communications of U.S. citizens. (Source and Source)
January 13, 2000: Then-NSA Director Michael Hayden states that his Agency's
electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens:
may only target the communications of U.S. residents after the NSA obtains
a federal court order suggesting that a particular individual might be "an
agent of a foreign power"; and
may not target any U.S. person overseas without the prior approval of the
Attorney General, who must have probable cause to believe that the
individual in question "is an agent of a foreign power, or a spy,
terrorist, saboteur, or someone who aides or abets them."
With regard to the unintentional collection of communications to, from, or
about U.S. citizens, Hayden stresses that such information is not retained
by the NSA "unless the information is necessary to understand a particular
piece of foreign intelligence or assess its importance." (Source)
January 2001: Two longtime NSA employees, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe,
complete their development of the so-called Thin Thread data-collection and
information-processing system, which they have equipped with an
"anonymizing" feature designed to ensure Fourth Amendment protections for
the private communications of U.S. citizens. But NSA leadership, including
then-Director General Michael Hayden, give preference istead to
Trailblazer--a system which thus far exists only on paper and is on track
toward becoming far more costly than Thin Thread. (Source)
October 31, 2001: A number of whistleblowers reveal the extent of the NSA's
surveillance of the communications of U.S. citizens. The aforementioned
William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe resign from the Agency because they
believe that a component of Thin Thread (which they developed) has been
used to illegally spy on Americans' private communications. Moreover,
Binney and Wiebe contend that if Thin Thread had been utilized properly, it
could have detected the 9/11 plot in its planning phase and thus could have
prevented the attacks. (Source)
Early 2000s: Binney and Wiebe disclose details about the NSA's massive
domestic spying program, Stellar Wind, which intercepts domestic
communications (phone calls and emails) without protections for U.S.
citizens. According to Binney, the NSA has been given access to
telecommunications companies' domestic and international billing records,
and has intercepted between 15 and 20 trillion communications since 9/11.
Binney further discloses that Stellar Wind, which is based on a component
of the Thin Thread capability but lacks the latter's built-in privacy
protections, is classfied as a "Terrorist Surveillance Program" in order to
give cover to its possibly unconstitutional nature. (Source)
May 2006: The NSA begins violating the rules governing telephone-record
surveillance by collecting metadata on millions of calls that are made to
(or from) a select list of nearly 4,000 phone numbers whose owners -- some
of whom are based in the United States -- clearly have no terrorist ties.
This abuse will continue until January 24, 2009, by which time the list of
improperly monitored phone numbers has grown to about 16,000. Moreover, the
abuse will not be publicly exposed until September 10, 2013.
2007: The NSA launches a clandestine electronic-surveillance, data-mining
program whose government code name is PRISM. This program stores Internet
communications which the NSA obtains from Internet companies (like Google,
Inc.) under Section 702 of the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act]. Through these PRISM requests, the NSA can decode even communications
that were encrypted when they were first transmitted, and can retrieve
stored data that telecommunication filtering systems have already
discarded. (The PRISM program's existence will not be known to the public
until Edward Snowden's revelations in June 2013.)
2010: A Washington Post article reports that "every day, collection systems
at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other type
of communications." (Source)
February 4, 2011: Attorney General Eric Holder signs a directive ordering
Skype to provide the NSA not only with information about video and audio
chats (on Skype), but also about Skype's cloud storage service known as
SkyDrive. (Source)
May 2012: An NSA audit counts 2,776 incidents of unauthorized collection,
storage, access to, or distribution of legally protected communications
that occurred during the preceding 12 months. According to the Washington
Post: "Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or
violations of standard operating procedure." (Source)
December 26, 2012: The Special Source Operations (SSO) directorate inside
the NSA announces that it is now capable of collecting far more Internet
communications data than ever before.
March 12, 2013: At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper tells Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) that
the NSA does not engage in widespread surveillance of private U.S.
residents. The Clapper-Wyden exchange goes as follows:
Wyden: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or
hundreds of millions of Americans?"
Clapper: "No, sir."
Wyden: "It does not?"
Clapper: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently
perhaps, collect--but not wittingly." (Source)
April 25, 2013: The top-secret FISA Court issues an order giving the NSA
unlimited authority to track phone and email information of American
citizens, regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing, for a
three-month period that will end on July 19, 2013. Specifically, the court
order authorizes the Agency to collect "metadata" on these
communications--i.e., the phone numbers of both parties on a call, the
location of each party (derived from cell-phone GPS records), the time at
which the call is made, and the duration of the call. The FISA order also
authorizes NSA surveillance of the subject line of personal emails. The
order covers all metadata related to communications where both parties are
in the United States, or where one party is in the U.S. and the other is
abroad. But it does not cover the contents of the communications
themselves. (Source, Source, and Source)
Peter Eckersley, the Technology Projects Director at the digital
civil-liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains the
significance of metadata: "Metadata is the perfect place to start if you
want to troll through millions of people's communications to find patterns
and to single out smaller groups for closer scrutiny. It will tell you
which groups of people go to political meetings together, which groups of
people go to church together, which groups of people go to nightclubs
together or sleep with each other.... [Such information provides] a deeply
intimate window into a person's psyche." (Source)
June 5, 2013: Twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden, a former technical
assistant for the CIA, issues a host of startling revelations about the
extent of the NSA's surveillance activities. Snowden reveals, for instance,
that Verizon has been collecting the metadata of millions of its customers'
phone records--regardless of whether or not they were suspected of any
wrongdoing--since FISA's court order in April. (Source)
June 6, 2013: James Bamford, a journalist and author of several books on
the NSA, says: "Here we are, under the Obama administration, doing it sort
of like the Bush administration on steroids. This [April 2013 FISA] order
here is about as broad as it can possibly get, when it comes to focusing on
personal communications. There's no warrant, there's no suspicion, there's
no probable cause ... it sounds like something from East Germany." (Source)
June 6, 2013: The White House defends the NSA's collection of Americans'
telephone communication records as "a critical tool in protecting the
nation from terrorist threats." (Source)
June 6, 2013: At a U.S. Senate hearing, Attorney General Eric Holder is
asked about the NSA phone surveillance program and responds evasively,
saying that this hearing is not an appropriate place to talk about the
matter, but that he will be glad to discuss it at some other time and
place. (Source)
June 6, 2013: Several former NSA employees-turned-whistleblowers say that
the Agency's surveillance of private communications has been going on for
years, involving all the major U.S. phone companies. One whistleblower
estimates that the NSA collects metadata records on 3 billion phone calls
per day. (Source)
June 6, 2013: The PRISM program -- a collaboration between the NSA, FBI,
and many major tech companies -- is made public. Through PRISM, the NSA has
been tapping into the servers of nine major U.S. Internet companies:
Microsoft (since May 2007), Yahoo (since 2008), Google (since 2009),
Facebook (since 2009), PalTalk (since 2009), YouTube (since 2010), AOL
(since 2011), Skype (since 2011), and Apple (since 2012). As such, the
Agency has had the capacity to monitor all audio and video chats,
photographs, e-mails, documents, connection logs, videos, voice-over-IPs
(Skype, for example), file transfers, and social networking details. It is
also revealed that Congress has given the Justice Department "authority for
a secret order from the [FISA] Court to compel a reluctant [Internet]
company 'to comply.'" One intelligence officer who leaked the information
to the press says, "They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you
type." (Source, Source)
June 7, 2013: During a press conference, President Obama declares: "When it
comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls.
That's not what this [NSA] program is about." (Source)
June 8, 2013: Republicans and Democrats alike issue statements against the
Obama administration as the NSA spying controversy becomes prominent.
Republican Senator Rand Paul states:
"I think the irony is that people voted for President Obama hoping for
something different. They were hoping for someone who'd protect the First
Amendment, someone who'd protect the Fourth Amendment ..."
Similarly, far-Left Independent Senator Bernie Sanders says:
"I worry what it would mean for American civil liberties, but I will tell
you I never ever expected that under any definition of that legislation
that it would mean the phone calls of millions and millions of
Americans--virtually none of whom the government has any reason to believe
is involved in terrorism--would be checked by the United States government."
(Source)
June 9, 2013: Director of National Intelligence spokesman Shawn Turner says
that the NSA controversy will be referred to the Department of Justice for
investigation. "The Intelligence Community is currently reviewing the
damage that has been done by these recent disclosures," says Turner. "Any
person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation
to protect classified information and abide by the law." (Source)
June 9, 2013: In response to the Obama administration's claim that the
PATRIOT Act authorizes the NSA's surveillance of American citizens' private
communications, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, one of the framers of the PATRIOT
Act, says that the expansive NSA surveillance goes far beyond what the Act
intended:
"The administration claims authority to sift through details of our private
lives because the Patriot Act says that it can. I disagree. I authored the
PATRIOT Act, and this is an abuse of that law.... The legislation had to be
narrowly tailored--everyone agreed that we could not allow unrestrained
surveillance.... [T]he PATRIOT Act was never intended to allow the daily
spying the Obama administration is conducting." (Source)
June 10, 2013: Edward Snowden states: "I, sitting at my desk, [could]
wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the
president, if I had a personal email." (Source)
June 10, 2013: Director of National Intelligence spokesman Shawn Turner
says that intelligence officials are "currently reviewing the damage that
has been done by [Snowden's] recent disclosures." Justice Department
spokeswoman Nanda Chitre says, "The Department of Justice is in the initial
stages of an investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified
information by an individual with authorized access." (Source)
June 10, 2013: White House spokesman Jay Carney says that the Obama
administration has no comment regarding NSA leaker Edward Snowden because
there is an ongoing investigation into the matter. "I think the President's
record on transparency is broad and significant," states Carney. (Source)
June 11, 2013: The Guardian acquires Top Secret documents about the NSA
data-mining tool known as Boundless Informant, which shows all data that
has been retrieved on a country-by-country basis. For example, Boundless
Informant reveals that the NSA gathered 3 billion pieces of intelligence
from U.S. computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013, and
97 billion pieces of intelligence from networks worldwide during the same
time period. (Source)
June 12, 2013: The ACLU becomes the first organization to file a lawsuit
against the NSA for the secret monitoring of American citizens, charging
that the program violates the constitutional rights of free speech,
association, and privacy. (Source)
June 12, 2013: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who told a
Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on March 12th that the NSA does not
collect information on millions of Americans, tries to clarify that
assertion, telling NBC News' Andrea Mitchell:
"I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked [a] 'When are you going to
... stop beating your wife' kind of question, which is meaning not
answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I
thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying 'no'."
(Source)
June 12, 2013: Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) writes: "It now appears clear
that the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, lied under oath
to Congress and the American people. Members of Congress can't make
informed decisions on intelligence issues when the head of the intelligence
community wilfully makes false statements. Perjury is a serious crime. Mr
Clapper should resign immediately." (Source)
June 12, 2013: In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, NSA
director Keith Alexander states that his Agency's surveillance has
disrupted, or helped to disrupt, dozens of terrorist threats. He adds that
Edward Snowden was incorrect in claiming that it was possible for the NSA
to tap in to any private phone call or read any private email. (Source and
Source)
June 14, 2013: An increasing number of polls show that American citizens
believe that the NSA's surveillance activities are too broad and intrusive;
people are especially worried that their private information will be leaked
by a rogue operator. (Source)
June 14, 2013: A former NSA computer technician says that thousands of
technology, finance and manufacturing companies work closely with U.S.
national security agencies and, in the process, receive access to
classified intelligence. These companies provide sensitive information to
the agencies, in return for guarantees that they will not be held liable in
any future lawsuits related to their actions in this capacity. (Source)
June 15, 2013: U.S. intelligence officials claim that the data collected by
the NSA has thwarted terrorist plots in more than 20 countries, including
the United States. They also argue that the NSA surveillance programs are
far less sweeping than their detractors allege. (Source)
June 15, 2013: Contrary to President Obama's assurances, the NSA concedes
in a classified briefing (to members of Congress) that it does not need
court authorization to monitor the contents of phone calls, emails, text
messages, and instant messages. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New York), who
attended that briefing, confirms that he was told that the contents of any
phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding" to do
so. (Source)
June 15, 2013: Soon after the aforementioned revelations, the Director of
National Intelligence Public Affairs Office says: "The statement that a
single analyst can eavesdrop on domestic communications without proper
legal authorization is incorrect and was not briefed to Congress." (Source)
June 17, 2013: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) says that aside from members of
the congressional intelligence committees, most members of Congress have
been "kept totally in the dark" about the NSA surveillance programs. Cruz
adds that it is becoming increasingly difficult for Americans to trust
President Obama after learning that the IRS targeted Obama's political
opponents, the Justice Department targeted journalists with whom it was
dissatisfied, and the State Department misled the public about the 9/11/12
terrorist attacks in Benghazi. (Source)
June 17, 2013: Several newly released polls indicate that Americans' level
of trust in government is nearly at an all-time low. (Source)
June 17, 2013: When President Obama is asked about Edward Snowden in an
interview with PBS's Charlie Rose, he says: "The case has been referred to
the DOJ for criminal investigation ... and possible extradition. I will leave
it up to them to answer those questions." (Source)
June 17, 2013: President Obama tells interviewer Charlie Rose: "What I can
say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen
to your telephone calls ... by law and by rule, and unless they ... go to a
court, and obtain a warrant, and seek probable cause, the same way it's
always been, the same way when we were growing up and we were watching
movies, you want to go set up a wiretap, you got to go to a judge, show
probable cause." (Source)
June 18, 2013: Obama further tells Charlie Rose: "We're going to have to
find ways where the public has an assurance that there are checks and
balances in place ... that their phone calls aren't being listened into,
their text messages aren't being monitored, their emails are not being read
by some Big Brother somewhere." (Source)
June 18, 2013: In testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, NSA Director General Keith Alexander says that his Agency's
surveillance program has thwarted approximately 50 terrorist plots
worldwide, including one that was directed at the New York Stock Exchange.
(Source)
June 18, 2013: Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan), Chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, asks NSA Director General Keith Alexander whether
the NSA has the "ability to listen to Americans' phone calls or read their
emails under these two programs." Alexander responds, "No, we do not have
that authority."
Former state court judge Andrew Napolitano subsequently tells Fox News: "Of
course, he [Alexander] doesn't have the legal authority to [listen to] the
phone calls. That's not what the question asked. The question asked, 'Does
he have the practical ability to do so?' and he couldn't answer that
because the answer is 'yes.'" (Source)
June 18, 2013: New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly lashes out
against the NSA's phone and Internet data-collection programs, saying: "I
think if you listen to Snowden, he indicates that there's some sort of
malfeasance, people ... sitting around and watching the data. So I think
the question is: What sort of oversight is there inside the NSA to prevent
that abuse, if it's taking place?" (Source)
June 20, 2013: It is reported that FISA court-approved policies allow the
NSA to:
keep data that could potentially contain details about private American
citizens for up to five years;
retain and make use of "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications if
they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity,
encryptions, or any information relevant to cybersecurity;
preserve "foreign intelligence information" contained within
attorney-client communications; and
access the content of communications gathered from "U.S.-based machine[s]"
or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the U.S.
(Source)
June 20, 2013: According to the Guardian, "The broad scope of the [FISA]
court orders, and the nature of the procedures set out in the documents,
appear to clash with assurances from President Obama and senior
intelligence officials that the NSA could not access Americans' call or
email information without warrants." (Source)
June 27, 2013: It is reported that for more than two years, the Obama
administration permitted the NSA to continue collecting a vast number of
records pertaining to the email and Internet usage of Americans, and that a
judge on the FISA Court had approved a bulk collection order for Internet
metadata "every 90 days." Shawn Turner, the Obama administration's Director
of Communications for National Intelligence, says: "The Internet metadata
collection program authorized by the FISA court was discontinued in 2011
for operational and resource reasons and has not been restarted. The
program was discontinued by the executive branch as the result of an
interagency review." (Source)
June 29, 2013: Secret documents obtained by Spiegel reveal that the NSA in
recent years has: (a) conducted online surveillance of European citizens;
(b) specifically bugged buildings that housed European Union (EU)
institutions; and (c) infiltrated the EU representation's computer network,
thereby gaining the ability to monitor discussions in EU rooms as well as
emails and internal documents on the computers. (Source)
Snowden obviously did not think of it first....
On Saturday, April 5, 2014, coderman <coderman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 5:09 AM, John Young <jya@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> The CIA is the principal customer of NSA products outside
>> the military...
>>
>> CIA (long FBI opponents) thought FBI could not cope with inside
>> terrorists, using 9/11 as an example, and advocated NSA involvement
>> with its much greater technical capability, but more importantly, its
>> military-privileged secrecy not susceptible to full congressional
>> oversight, courts and FOIA.
>>
>> The joint CIA-NSA Special Collection Service (SCS) has
>> been doing for decades what NSA is now alone accused of doing:
>> CIA provided the targets, NSA did the technical collection from
>> those global stations identified by xKeyscore (most in embassies
>> or nearby).
>>
>> What is bizarre is how little CIA is mentioned in news furor about
>> NSA, as if NSA did its work in isolation from the IC and without
>> oversight of the 3 branches.
>
>
> FBI DITU also playing front-man as of late, it seems.
>
>
> FBI-DITU + NSA-SSO/TAO + CIA/NSA-SCS
> - this is a trifecta of fuckery!
>
>
> they're a legislative laundry designed to circumvent any constraints
> individually by collectively attaining ends via means so offensive
> they must remain hidden lest "National Security and The Future of our
> Nation" be at risk...
>
>
> were i a new age "Citizens for Intelligence Community Oversight" i
> would pwn all three, and dump the entirety of their operations to
> darknet. let the public sort it out...
> [exercise for the reader: would it take longer for the world to
> digest an entire dump than it would the current Snowden-subset
> processing via reporter privilege?]
>
>
>
>
>
>> SCS also does burglaries, code snatches, decrypts, doc drops,
>> stings, ploys, blackmail, the panoply of CIA operations. The increased
>> civilian target panoply bestowed upon NSA came from CIA demands
>> channeled through ODNI.
>>
>> Reviewing what little has been released of the Snowden documents
>> they are quite similar to what SCS has been doing with the addition
>> of the US as target. FISA had to be rejiggered for the US domain.
>
> the use of foreign, military IC tools against domestic targets is
> where many interesting stories lay. you think yesterday's battlefield
> exploits don't become today's domestic lawful access? epic lulz!
> what fucking tatters they've left our "Constitutional Rights"...
> [which should be afforded to all citizens of Eath, my over seas
> peers fucked harder, longer, in no offensive a manner]
>
>
>
>> NSA's recent attempt to slough off Cybercom and return to
>> its military mission, has been rejected by the civilian overseers
>> following CIA guidance and fear-mongering of civilians, especially
>> those inside the US. The last thing CIA and its supporters want
>> is a revelation of its manipulation of civilian leaders institutionalized
>> by the 1947 National Security Act (also opposed by the military).
>
> indeed. IC suffering a deluge of undue oversight and sunlight. are
> you crazy POTUS, you want more potential visibility? get tha fuck
> back in yer hole, servant...
>
>